Category Archives: Education

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Detroit

20 Comments

Death by democracy:

Here, where cattle could graze in vast swaths of this depopulated city, democracy ratified a double delusion: Magic would rescue the city (consult the Bible, the bit about the multiplication of the loaves and fishes), or Washington would deem Detroit, as it recently did some banks and two of the three Detroit-based automobile companies, “too big to fail.” But Detroit failed long ago. And not even Washington, whose recklessness is almost limitless, is oblivious to the minefield of moral hazard it would stride into if it rescued this city and, then inevitably, others that are buckling beneath the weight of their cumulative follies. It is axiomatic: When there is no penalty for failure, failures proliferate. This bedraggled city’s decay poses no theological conundrum of the sort that troubled Darwin, but it does pose worrisome questions about the viability of democracy in jurisdictions where big government and its unionized employees collaborate in pillaging taxpayers. Self-government has failed in what once was America’s fourth-largest city and now is smaller than Charlotte, N.C.

This is why the Founders gave us a republic, not a democracy.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Obama’s Speech

36 Comments

…is a confession of impotence:

If you listened closely, the speech seemed like a confession that the president knows he can’t do much. The deep problems afflicting America — social and economic breakdown in inner cities and rural areas; rising economic insecurity; widening gulfs between ideologies, regions, and socioeconomic classes — are simply far beyond the president’s reach.

They’re particularly beyond this president’s reach, given the economic insanity of his fundamental ideology.

And then, there’s the completely unjustified arrogance and contempt for us and our intelligence:

Obama’s speech was a dreadful, cliché-ridden piece of writing. Here’s our favorite bit: “Rather than reduce our deficits with a scalpel–by cutting programs we don’t need, fixing ones we do, and making government more efficient–this same group has insisted on leaving in place a meat cleaver called the sequester that has cost jobs, harmed growth, hurt our military, and gutted investments in American education and scientific and medical research that we need to make this country a magnet for good jobs.”

Because as Ben Franklin sagely observed, you can’t make a magnet with cloven meat.

But wait. It’s worse than that. He’s criticizing “this same group” for leaving in place a meat cleaver. What happens when you leave a cleaver in place? Nothing!

“With an endless parade of distractions, political posturing and phony scandals, Washington has taken its eye off the ball,” the president harrumphed. There’s an image for you. Where exactly is the ball relative to the parade route?

Also, which scandals exactly are “phony”? The biggest scandal is the one that raises serious questions about the legitimacy of Obama’s re-election. Here is what President Asterisk himself had to say on the subject way back on May 13: “If you’ve got the IRS operating in anything less than a neutral and non-partisan way, then that is outrageous, it is contrary to our traditions. And people have to be held accountable, and it’s got to be fixed. . . . I’ve got no patience with it. I will not tolerate it.”

We’re sure his outrage over the phony scandal was genuine.

Yes. As genuine as most things he says. Though, as noted, he is occasionally honest:

On the other hand, Obama’s certitude about his own superiority, his utter contempt for his political adversaries, even for those whose priorities differ from his–now that’s genuine. It is the central feature of his political character, and the proximate cause of–pardon the cliché–Washington’s current “dysfunction.”

Indeed.

Education, Media Criticism, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Hyphens

10 Comments

Is the Internet killing them? This is the problem:

“People are not confident about using hyphens anymore, they’re not really sure what they are for,” Shorter OED editor Angus Stevenson told Reuters at the time.

It’s part of the continuing breakdown of the educational system. Hyphens are important, primarily for disambiguation of modifiers. There is a difference between a light brown suitcase and a light-brown suitcase. The former is a brown suitcase that doesn’t weigh much, and the latter is a suitcase (of unknown weight) that is light brown. It’s that simple.

Education, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Mitch Daniels

2 Comments

Why he was right about Howard Zinn. Not to mention schools of education.

As Glenn notes, Zinn was a communist, and his works (and those who admire them) should be no more worthy of respect than those of an avowed Nazi.

[Update a few minutes later]

More:

The AP story is a sort of hit job, intended to discredit Daniels who is coming up for his six-month review as head of Perdue University. Its actual effect, on me, anyway, was to increase my already high esteem for the man. Here is a chap that not only saved the state of Indiana from the fiscal nightmare that leftist-run states like Illinois and Michigan are suffering (remember Detroit?), but he is also someone who can spot a Communist fraud at 100 paces and isn’t afraid to say that left-wing propaganda is not the same as history and should not be purveyed as such on the taxpayer’s dime. Zinn’s book, wrote Daniels in one of those emails, “is a truly execrable, anti-factual piece of disinformation that misstates American history on every page.” That’s exactly right.

…Note well, Daniels doesn’t say Zinn’s book oughtn’t to be allowed to be published. He doesn’t want to censor the book. He merely says it shouldn’t be taught as history. He would, I’d wager, say the same thing about The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And he’d be right.

The country needs a lot more Mitch Danielses. It’s a shame that he didn’t run in 2008.

[Update late evening]

First link was broken. Fixed now. Sorry!

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Delaying College

6 Comments

Some thoughts (mostly in comments):

The idea of going to a theme park, on your parents’ dime, with fashionable political fear, having undertaken no scholarly preparation…every single thing about this enterprise seemed wrong.

And expensive and destructive. We have a generation that’s putting off home buying and starting a family because they wasted tens of thousands on either useless degrees or (worse yet) never graduated at all.

Education, Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Humanities

5 Comments

The decline and fall:

The radical scholars recognized Western Civ had to be erased to achieve their goal of destroying the old order and ushering in the new “inclusive” inclusive manifesto. (Remember Jesse Jackson’s chant at Stanford? “Hi-ho, hi-ho, Western Civ has to go”). In the process, the General College was abandoned – and with it went the foundation of a proper college education.

And out went academic standards, which suited the radicals who adopted grade inflation as a gesture against the Vietnam War. College students found it much easier to remain full time students without contending with the onerous course load, and even easier to maintain a 2.0 academic average – the minimum to avoid losing the student draft deferment. Plus students could now choose courses across the spectrum without having to build a foundation of academic rigor.

By the late 1970s, many radical scholars were gaining tenure — the archaic privilege enjoyed by academics that guarantees a job for life — and the power to push their advantage to mold the curriculum to their purposes. New hires were screened for allegiance to the radical manifestos. Traditional liberal arts course work was re-defined to focus on women, race, sexual technique, gays and the environment. The result has been unsound subjects masquerading as worthy academic pursuits — and college graduates who are unaware of their inherited culture.

The public was mostly unaware of this revolutionary change.

Unfortunately, it probably still is. As noted in the piece,the current “humanities” aren’t worth saving, or worth the cost of the tuition for them. At least more people are starting to figure that out.